Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!hwcs!idc
From: idc@cs.hw.ac.uk (Ian Crorie)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: EUNet, unido and USENET
Summary: LONG
Keywords: still LONG
Message-ID: <588@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 4 Jul 89 12:20:19 GMT
Reply-To: idc@cs.hw.ac.uk (Ian Crorie)
Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland
Lines: 116


1. "Why do these Europeans have such a tightly controlled, hierarchical
    organization for moving news?"

  (i)   The cost of international calls between European countries
        is typically pretty high so having just one `gateway' site
        per country makes financial sense.

  (ii)  It is difficult to separate news from mail.   And EUNet
        email just *has* to be organized this way.

        Firstly, top level domains here are geographical.   It makes
        routing so simple if I can route mail for anything.whatever.de
        to a German gateway.   We don't (yet) have anything like MX
        records and what sensible person wants to keep map files for
        most of the world up to date? (The .uk domain has a few problems
        here but that's another can of worms).

        More importantly, EUNet sites have to pay to send mail to
        other countries (in principle; in some countries it is sometimes
        possible to route by another network).   
 
        We also have to pay to *receive* mail from the States.
        Example:
        I'm a german leaf site sending mail to bush@whitehousevax.uucp :
           I pay for the call to unido
           I pay for unido sending to mcvax
           I pay for mcvax sending to uunet
           ...whitehousevax calls up uunet and pays for this

           ...bush replies, calls up uunet and pays for this
           I pay for uunet sending to mcvax
           I pay for mcvax sending to unido
           I pay to call up unido

        I'm not moaning at USENET in the U.S.    The size of it and
        the way it is (not) organized makes it inconceivable that
        you could start charging people for their transatlantic mail.
        It gets better every year as well; costs go down, mail goes
        faster.   The point is that EUNet has to be more organized.

        This involves a lot of administrative work.   I wouldn't want
        to work in the same building just in case I ever had to do any
        of it.   It needs computers, disks, lines, maintenance
        contracts, staff, accounting software for every mail message,
        accounting software for billing, sending bills, sending
        statements, hassling slow customers, liaising with other backbone
        sites, with mcvax, with other networks in Europe, with customers,
        writing newsletters, giving talks at seminars, hustling for
        subsidies, hustling for resources within your company/university.
        I must have missed out a lot.

        Quite a few people have suggested changes in the charging
        policy used by unido.   Even if the current one *was*
        inefficient or unfair (I've not seen enough info to even guess) it
        has the advantage of following the system used for email, avoiding
        some duplication of effort.

2. "Why is EUNet not more like the U.S. part of USENET - a site gets news
    for free from a neighbour then offers a free feed in turn to others
    (everyone pays their owns costs for transferring the news)?"

    (i)  We do that anyway.   It's just the problem of getting news
         into each country in the first place.  So we pay that little
         bit extra.

3. "It seems that German sites are paying more than a little bit extra!"

    (i)  Yes.   They don't seem to have enough sites to spread the
         financial burden around.    Some countries have lots more
         sites (see articles from Holland and the U.K.).
         It would be great if unido could come up with some marketing
         plan to lower the charges to a level attractive enough that
         the German part of USENET really took off.   Ten times as
         many sites paying a tenth as much money, that sort of thing.
         But they are a University, not a company.   Difficult to
         raise the venture capital for such a scheme from their
         accountants (;-).

4. "What would be wrong with a U.S. site offering a European one a
    trailblazer feed bypassing EUNet?"

    (i)  For News?   I don't see anything wrong with that (IHMO)
         as long as they are registered with EUNet for mail.
         Are there really many sites that want news but not email?

    (ii) For Mail?   Really messy.   My national backbone site
         ukc.ac.uk registers me as zzz in the world maps?   They
         wouldn't route mail if it cost them money and I refused to
         pay.   Why should they?

         Someone in the states registers me as zzz.org and forwards my
         mail?   If most of my mail goes to the U.S. anyway I guess this
	 might be cheaper than using EUNet.  It'll cost me the same to
	 mail an EUNet site in my home town as it will to mail someone
         in Texas.   Of course, the poor EUNet site will pay 3 times for
	 the mail I send him as well as for the mail he sends me.   But
	 to him I just look like another U.S. site.   It costs him the same
         as if I were.
 
	 I don't know.   It just doesn't seem quite right.   Do I find
	 it unsettling because I think of domains in geographical terms?
	 Or because I'm so used to thinking `where is this going and what
	 will it cost?'.   Maybe someone else can think through the 
	 financial and technical implications.

         BTW, it occurs to me that this already happens in the case of
         large private networks.   If I mail to (say) someone@xxx.att.com
	 the mail is routed to the U.S. but it might end up on a screen a
	 few miles away in Europe (in principle).   
	      

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